I was shocked when I took out the potatoes. Every potato has a bud. Looking at the bag full of seeds, I gave a wry smile and remembered the scene of growing potatoes when I was a child.
At that time, my father worked in other places and seldom went home. Mom does all the work inside and outside the house. My mother is a private teacher in a village primary school. Besides teaching, she is also busy with all kinds of housework and some farm work. Although our brothers and sisters have grown up a little, they also share some housework for their mothers. Every day when I come home from school or on holidays, I walk back and forth in the fields with my mother. Of course, the vegetable fields are the most visited.
All kinds of vegetables are planted in my vegetable field, and potatoes are the most planted. Because of the poor conditions at that time, good dishes such as meat and fish were not often eaten. Some dishes have been on the market for a short time. Only this potato has been eaten for a long time and has become the main course.
The first month or so is the time to plant potatoes. We will make the open space into a ridge, then dig a uniform nest on it with a hoe, then put some calcium superphosphate (a light blue powdery fertilizer) in the nest, then pour some water fertilizer on it, and then put the cut potato seeds in the wet nest with their buds facing up. As a seed potato, there are many buds, and each bud can survive independently, so you can cut them into several pieces. Cut potatoes are often mixed with green ash before they can be put into the nest. This green ash was taken out of the pot after the dry wood was burned. After the seeds are buried, the potatoes must be covered with ash together with the buds. This ash is different from the previous one. It is made of mud and dry firewood. Burning ash in rural areas is very particular. If the fire is not good, the soil is soil, the firewood is firewood, or some of it is burned, and some of it is still the same, then it must be burned again.
After beginning of spring, potato buds emerged from the soil, tender and green, and then grew bigger and bigger, gradually occupying the whole clearing. Those oval leaves, with obvious ribs and uneven veins, are very beautiful. The stem is upright and inclined. Shortly after flowering, underground tubers grow slowly to form potatoes.
Potatoes that grow underground are easily eaten by an insect. This insect is shaped like a silkworm, with a curved body and close head and tail, commonly known as "Eupolyphaga Pill". The potatoes eaten by Worm Pills will leave scars.
At that time, although my mother was young, her body was thin and it was very difficult to do manual work in the field. There are many things we can't do. In the long-term work, my mother not only maintained the livelihood of the whole family, but also became an expert in growing vegetables in the village. The vegetables she grows always grow well.
It will soon be the season for planting potatoes again. When I think of a painting by Van Gogh, A Family Eating Potatoes, a warm feeling comes to my mind again.